Wednesday I was photographing events on the tall ships Star of India and California. As I switching lenses from the 12-40 to 35-100 and as I was taking the 12-40 off…

I pushed the camera’s lens release button and the front of the hood moved in my hand. I didn’t finish unlocking the lens and grabbed the lens hood. Off came the petal portion, one of the buttons fell, and the aluminum base cover portion was still on hanging on the lens. Removing the base cover and replacing the petal portion and a couple of pieces of gaffer tape, kept the hood on for the rest of the day.

I needed a functional lens hood pretty quickly since I have another daytime outside event Saturday.

Checking Amazon Wednesday night the OEM lens hood was $36 and would have to come via snail mail all the way across the US. There were two others, both were a JJC LH-66K Lens hood, one marketed as a Fotasy LH-66K lens hood yet clearly marked as the JJC ($17) and shipping was Prime. The other was the JJC lens hood, was $19 but without Prime. So I ordered the Fotasy lens hood. It arrived today, Friday.

It is nearly identically sized to the OEM 12-40mm lens hood, the fit is not quite as smooth as the OEM yet fully functional. The base cover is plastic instead of aluminum like the OEM's part. At less than half the cost of the original, highly recommended.

Slightly unrelated however one modification I've commonly seen is to take a dremel to the buttons which remove the hood from the lens so that they're flush with the outside surface of the hood. This stops them being pressed accidentally.

I've lost or almost lost the hood because it disconnects too easily more times than I can count.

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